Freud’s Last Session
C.S. Lewis probably never met Sigmund Freud. He had many great opportunities to correspond with great minds of his day but there is no evidence that the great psychologist was one of them, he had only entered the English psyche a few years before Freud took his own life in 1939. There is plenty of evidence that Lewis was deeply familiar with Freud however; he argues against him repeatedly in his body of work because Freudian psychoanalysis was extremely popular at Oxford during its peak.
Freud was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century; he pioneered human psychology and was an outspoken atheist. His views have influenced generations of academics and scientists, challenging Christians with the charge that their beliefs are childish fairytales and delusions created to falsely fulfill man’s deepest desires for meaning “Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.”
So Freud’s Last Session begins with a number of interesting philosophical and theological questions, spinning up a fictional scenario about how a young Lewis could’ve met a dying Freud and then what they might have said to each other. This new film adaptation is based on the Mark St. Germain stageplay of the same name, which won many awards for its off Broadway performances in 2010; the play itself was adapted from Dr. Armand Nicoli’s book The Question of God C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.
The story takes place in September 1939, after Britain declared war on Germany following their invasion of Poland. In his last weeks alive, Freud summoned the young Oxford don to discuss the ideas of his most recent book The Pilgrim’s Regress which portrays Freud as an arrogant and ignorant materialist. Throughout multiple meetings and days together, they talk about their lives and views on the world while grappling with life’s hardest questions does God exist? what is suffering? is sex moral? when will I die? can I kill myself?
Freud’s Last Session probably shouldn’t be considered a great film because it isn’t one. It has stagey blocking, flat cinematography, small settings limited to a few rooms and most performances are only serviceable or unremarkable. It’s a low budget movie that reflects its script’s limited setting by flashing brief flashbacks/transitions throughout where we are placed against WWII, with soldiers in the background prepping for air raids and waiting for violence to happen inevitably.
But the movie is charming at points. Having Anthony Hopkins playing Sigmund Freud doesn’t hurt either he brings some much needed gravitas to what may be his most vital role in years which also represents a curious full circle moment for his career this year marks the 30th anniversary of Shadowlands, where Hopkins played CS Lewis opposite Freud’s intellectual rival here represented by another actor playing Lewis himself.
Most of the film centers around this central debate between Lewis and Freud, there is much screen time devoted just to their intellectual sparring matches and mutual rivalries because both men represent something that other person wants very badly to defeat within themselves. In his final weeks alive though, Freud seems like he wants nothing more than to put some of his life and death anxieties to sleep once and for all seeing in the apologist a deluded pin he can knock down easily if provoked enough times. Freud keeps probing Lewis for psychological motivations behind his beliefs, hoping to flatten out all of his thought processes and expose him as a fraud.
But both men are depicted as having very complicated inner lives in this movie. Lewis has struggled with overcoming years spent living in sexual sin, just like we have seen him do before elsewhere on film, but also now having to cope with the traumas inflicted by war too. Similarly, Freud is portrayed here as a moral hypocrite who thinks he can explain away any mistake he’s ever made even though it hurt deeply those around him such as his lesbian daughter and colleagues. The movie wisely draws heavily upon many core ideas from their mutual philosophies throughout, much of Lewis’s dialogue in fact comes straight out of books like Surprised by Joy or The Problem of Pain etc., so readers familiar with these works should feel right at home here. By the time credits roll neither side has really given an inch but there does seem to be some newfound respect between them after all these rounds together.
Freud’s Last Session is not a masterpiece and most of what it says will probably be repetitive to people who have studied Lewis for years already. Still I can’t help but love this thing, I’ve seen it twice now and it’s just quietly sad work that enjoys putting two great minds against each other for no reason other than to wonder why they didn’t mess each other up more seriously. It is quiet because it wants us thinking but blunt enough that while we’re thinking about these things they’re stuck right there in front of us too.
However, I can’t deny that I’m in love with it and urge you to see it if you can
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